Yola – Build a Website, No Experience Needed

Having a website is a must for the majority of businesses, It is also becoming more important for individuals. Whether you freelance, are job hunting or just want a place to express yourself, there is a lot of choices out there.

Yola gives you your space on the web. There are both free and paid packages available. I am going to talk about the free version. Yola is really easy to set up and super easy to change if you don’t like the way your site looks. If you are just starting out, building a site can be a bit intimidating. Yola adds some neat features to help make things go a bit smoother on your first attempt.

Choosing the type of site

One of the first steps you need to complete is choosing the kind of site it will be.

When you choose from the list of different possibilities, you will see the recommended pages change. Having these suggestions helps you remember what pages you will need. The pages are automatically added once you select the type of site.

20 questions

Okay, maybe not 20 questions, but you will be asked a few. These are to fill in parts of the site. About me, mission statement, contact information and other questions can be answered.

To help you, there are examples in a bubble to the right of the text box you are working on.If you don’t want to answer now, you can always do it later.

Style

After you fill in the information, it is time to pick the style of the site. The style is a template for the site. If you were making a WordPress site, this would be the same as a Theme. There are many choices, some are free. The more complex styles will cost you to use.

Widgets

To add things to your page, you have lots of widgets. There are different widgets for different pages. For example, you have multimedia, communication, maps and more on the About us page. If you go the Blog page, there is a whole new set of widgets to choose from. All of them are in the right sidebar.

To use a widget drag what you want where you want. The drag and drop method is easier than dealing with HTML or finding the right plugin.

Layout

The drag and drop rearranging extends to more than just the widget placement. You can rearrange most objects on the page by dragging them where you want them. For anyone who is not too techy, this is a great way to make a page the way you want it with little hassle.

Background

Changing the background is just as easy. Up toward the top of the page there is an option to change the background. Using this option, you can change the page you are on or all the pages on the site.

There are quite a few options out there for free hosted websites. Yola gives you a really great way to build a good looking site with very little technical knowledge.

One comment

I’m using Yola since it was called Synthasite and I’m very satisfied with it. I really appreciate the level you can customize all the widgets available. The possibility to export the entire website as a zip file on my computer for later use is also a great feature Very reccomended